Klarex Creates Water Task Force, Lashes Out at Critics
By Mona Lagbas
Cagayan de Oro City, March 6,2024_Due to the recent issues and concerns regarding water in the city, Mayor Rolando “Klarex” Uy today issued Executive Order No. 109-2024 creating the Cagayan de Oro Task Force for Water Supply and Distribution with the Local Chief Executive as its chairman.
Mayor Uy cited the current water crisis and particularly the conflict between the Cagayan de Oro Water District (COWD) and Cagayan de Oro Bulk Water Inc.(COBI) as the reason for the creation of the task force wherein the latter allegedly threatened to disconnect or stop supplying water to the former by April 1 unless COWD’s debts, amounting to more or less half a billion pesos, to COBI were setttled, an outstanding debt that COWD is not acknowledging. Councilor Edgar Cabanlas is co-chairman, while members include department managers, line agencies, business leaders, civic groups and consumers themselves.
In a press conference held at City Hall, Uy disclosed that he has talked with possible suppliers who are wlling and able to supply water to the city in the event that COBI stops supplying water to COWD next month. He added that he has inherited this challenge and that he will face and solve this problem even as he noted that the current shortage of water in more than 40 barangays is due to still unfinished relocation of pipelines works.
He said that the water crisis being experienced now has been exacerbated with the news that COBI will stop supplying water to COWD next month.
As to alleged accusations that the Uy administration is unable to resolve this water crisis, Mayor Klarex lashed out by saying that if only the past local leadership had done its job properly, this problem would
not have arisen. Uy was referring to an alleged onerous contract between COWD and COBI in 2017.
Mr. Bencyrus Ellorin, of the Mayor’s office, cited records that showed that the majority of the appointees of the then Local Chief Executive to the COWD Board of Directors approved the contract between COWD and COBI in 2017. Ellorin added that it was only Professor Soc del Rosario who was in the minority of the COWD BOD then.
Mayor Uy thanked the media practitioners present and denied that he has control of them and their reports by saying,”dil ko kamo kontrolado ug maulaw ako kaninyo. Nagasalig ako sa inyong malantik nga salabutan, sa inyong dedikasyon sa inyong mga tahas ug sa pagbalita sa tinuod lamang”.
Comments